The Olympic Spirit

Another glorious Olympics have come to a close. Heroes from within the contingent of heroes were selected, the human spirit soared itching to hear about what drove these champions to achieve, to relentlessly push themselves.

We thumped our fists in the air when the first Iranian woman, Kimia Alizadeh, won an Olympic medal, cheered the many girls who overcame societal pressures and barriers to go on to the Olympics from the Indian contingent. We pondered about the need for a personal struggle in order to achieve, we loved the concept of the Refugee team, and rooted for the heroes from this contingent as did the rest of the world. There were a few media gaffes quickly pounced upon by the judgmental social media audience: armchair solutions to world problems, that we mused about on our couches.

We went on to have discussions with the daughter, that we hope will stay with her long after the Olympics are over. In times of strife, humanity can be a marvelous force.

We are not folk who regularly watch Sports in the home. The odd cricket match aired at odd times is watched by the husband with bleary eyes. A few final matches of basketball or tennis comprises the bulk of our Sport watching thus far. However, I cannot fail to notice that every time we do so, it has a profound impact on the toddler (like the time Stephen Curry came to play) .

Every evening depending on the Olympic event aired, there was an inspirational performance at the old home.

Simon Biles and Dipa Karmankar flew to perfection in the gymnastics events, only to be followed by an evening of the toddler and his sister jumping off the broken sofa and spinning before landing perfectly on two feet. The doting brother gave his sister a score of 9.9 for this impossible feat.

The track and field events saw much charging about the house. Feverish runs between the kitchen and the garage were timed. After every fast charge up and down the house, we noticed the toddler also ran the slow motion version of the run. He thought he needed to run the slow-motion replays telecast by the television networks too.

The Men’s marathon was run in the rain. That meant he needed another hasty shower before bed, since he sprayed water on himself and ran 26 times around the house.

As long as there are broken beds and shuttles stuck on tree tops in enough number of homes, the Olympic torch will burn on as bright and promising as ever.

Good to see our family tradition is maintained. I dont know how much Prem explained our post Olympic activity in our old house terrace. All the gold medallist would have surrendered their medal to us because of the added dangerous environment in which we try their stunts.
We use to run on the parapet wall like Dipa on the bar, did with one side a concrete floor and on the other side the “Ootu veedu” terrace. If you fall on any side you are sure to have months of sabbatical leave :).
You can safely conclude May 29th are always like that 🙂

Oh gosh! That was hilarious. There was some explanation after seeing this comment in the morning, but a full action replay awaits in the evening. Children! How I wish we could retain the same pliant courage and optimism through life